Thursday, August 13, 2009

Live from Russia

This week I am giving some lectures at the NoNA Summer School on Complexity Theory in St. Petersburg. 

This is my first time in Russia, a country I never expected to visit when I grew up during the cold war. One has to go a few generations back, but most of my ancestors came from Russia (think Fiddler on the Roof) or one of the former Soviet republics. Fortnow is derived from a Russian name. My father was born Fortunow but dropped the silent "u" because no one knew it was silent. 

In almost every European country I usually pass as a native of that country (until I open my mouth). Less so in St. Petersburg, a bit strange since I got most of my genes from this country.

Summer schools are interesting affairs. Usually a week long where speakers give several lectures introducing usually local students to a specific topic. This is my third such school: I gave lectures on Kolmogorov complexity in the small town of Kaikoura in New Zealand and in Marseilles. This time the topic is "Structural Complexity," basically I'm shrinking a semester-long complexity class into six hours with very few proofs. A bit challenging because the students have very different academic backgrounds but it seemed to go reasonably well. I broke the four lectures into themes:
  1. Deterministic and Nondeterministic time and space including the polynomial-time hierarchy
  2. Probabilistic Computation with a whiff of quantum.
  3. Circuit Complexity
  4. Counting and Interactive proofs/PCPs.

Next week I'm on vacation in Europe and off the net. Bill is on his own. See you when I get back.

6 comments:

  1. Hi Lance,

    possible topic for a future blog post: do you consider yourself a 'structural' complexity theorist, and if so what differentiates this outlook from others?

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  2. Hello Lance,

    Thanks for your lectures and for the book on quantum computation you've recommended me to read. (I've just handled a chapter about teleportation and feel so inspired!)

    Anna Yudina

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  3. Curious about these things:
    Are you using your Kindle in Russia?
    Does you kindle have the whispernet connection in Russia?


    Your summer school students will appreciate your efforts and be thankful to you.

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  4. Anon 3: Yes I am using the Kindle here though Whispernet doesn't work outside the US. Instead I download through the USB cord.

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  5. Thanks a lot, Lance! You did a really exciting attempt to squeeze a semester course into four lectures. I think people with any background found something useful in your lectures.

    Hope you enjoyed the school's organization and had no problems. Please, tell us if something went wrong.

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  6. Thank you for your lectures! They were great as a comprehensive summary to the course, that I attended during the academic year. Nevertheless, it was very useful.

    Ilya Razenshteyn.

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